In most businesses, governments, and other organizations there are a critical few extraordinary leaders who make a difference. What if you could increase the number of those critical few leaders, even if only by a small margin? Leadership development - your own and others - is the most high-leverage thing you can do. This is our Leadership Manifesto.

1. Our Leadership Manifesto
We aim with this Leadership Manifesto to inspire, empower,
and enable people who have the aspiration to become
leaders to make a difference in their world.
Better Leaders,
Better World
O ur intention in this Leadership Manifesto is to sound the
tone for "Better Leaders, Better World." We believe that
leaders in business, government, healthcare, educa-
tion, and other organizations who hear this tone and come to the
tone by taking a stand for leadership development will be met with
unparalleled success. We believe that those who are indifferent to
the tone will be met with mixed fortunes at best. And those who do
not hear the tone, like so many fallen CEOs, may be crushed by it.
We are committed to the proposition "Better Leaders, Better World."
Just think for a moment what the implications of this statement might be in your world. As Benjamin Disraeli, the great
English Prime Minister, once said, "The planet goes on because of leaders who take a stand and make a difference." In
most businesses, governments, and other organizations, there are a critical few extraordinary leaders who take a stand
and make a difference—and a lot of very ordinary people who never stand for anything except more of the same.
What if you could increase the number of those critical few leaders, even if only by a small margin?
We are sounding the tone that leadership development—your own and others’—is the most high-leverage thing you
can do. Imagine how leadership development would impact creating an inspired, high-performing business organiza-
tion. Imagine how it would impact issues like achieving peace in the Middle East, ending hunger and starvation in Af-
rica, improving the healthcare system in the United States, or even bettering the schools in your own neighborhood.
The persistence of these issues on a global, national, and local level is a red flag for the fact that leadership is often
missing. If we can acknowledge that leadership is missing and see it as an opportunity rather than a threat, we can
begin to call forth the extraordinary leadership that is needed and wanted.

2. What is leadership? We believe that leaders are ordi-
nary people who become extraor-
dinary in daring to take a stand
that a difference can be made with respect to deplorable conditions and throb-
bing human needs and wants. Leaders stand for a possibility larger than them-
selves that represents what's missing that, if provided, would produce a break-
through: a Bill of Rights versus tyranny, a plan for prosperity versus poverty, health-
care versus disease.
To transform a mere possibility into a reality, leaders
must mobilize people to make the effort successful
by speaking to the vision that already exists in their
minds and hearts, as well as demonstrating strong
intentions in the face of difficult facts and circum-
stances.
The American Revolution and United States Constitu-
tion would not have been possible without the bril-
liant constellation of leaders like George Washing-
ton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Thomas Paine. Nor would America
exist today without the exceptional leadership of Abraham Lincoln or Franklin
Delano Roosevelt.
Millions more would have died from diseases like smallpox and polio had it not
have been for the leadership of people in medical science like Louis Pasteur and
Jonas Salk. Thanks to the leader-
ship of Craig Venter of Celera
A leader captures the vision that is already Genomics, scientists are
much closer to eliminating possi-
that
bly dozens of genetic disorders
in people’s minds & hearts. and diseases from human history.
Leaders of grassroots political
movements, like Martin Luther
King Jr. who advanced the cause of personal and civil rights for millions. This
cause was embraced by others around the world, like Nelson Mandela, who
worked to end apartheid in South Africa, and Vaclav Havel, who rallied the
Czech people against their Communist oppressors.
Leaders in design like urban planner Norman Krumholz and architect I.M. Pei used
modern, efficient designs to provide affordable, aesthetic housing to thousands of
low-income people. The engineering and leadership genius of Frank Crowe led
to the construction of the Hoover Dam before the deadline and under budget,
providing thousands living in a destitute area of Nevada with jobs and drinking
water during the harsh years of the Great Depression.
I have a dream….

3. Nor would our quality of life be the same without the technical leadership of Tho-
mas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, whose inventions added untold conven-
ience to the lives of millions. Business leaders like Henry Ford, who invented the
Model T, and Stephen Jobs, who created the idea of the "people's computer,"
revolutionized the manner in which we live our daily lives.
The acid test of leadership
The "acid test" of leadership in any field is to initiate and bring about sudden and
irrevocable change in deplorable situations that might otherwise last for decades
or even centuries. We are speaking about change that is consistent with funda-
mental human values.
This acid test of leadership may sound simple and straightforward enough, but
there are in fact very few people in leadership roles who are able to pass the test.
How many American presidents do you associate with bringing about an
"irreversible change" that resulted in a better world? How many CEOs could you
write down on your list? How many scientists, artists, or college professors? For
many leaders, the challenge of tackling the status quo and making a difference,
while simultaneously engaging in the political realities of attaining a top leader-
ship position, building high-leverage relationships, or even clinging to an executive
role can be a daunting one.
The acid test of leadership is being able to
mobilize people to bring about irrevocable
change, consistent with fundamental values.
Furthermore, many people in top positions are not in fact leaders who want to
make a difference, but rather power-wielders who operate from a position of
shortsighted, reckless self-interest. Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco, Ken Lay of Enron, and
"Chainsaw" Al Dunlap of Sunbeam Corporation all stand out as examples of cor-
porate anti-heroes.
The idea of political villains, from President Richard Nixon to former Congressman
James Traficant, expelled from the House for ethics violations, is so ingrained in our
culture that we seldom raise an eyebrow at the news of a scandal on Capitol Hill.
Every day we read about leaders who have fallen from grace, ruining their ca-
reers while causing untold damage to their organizations. Perhaps the biggest
dilemma facing leadership today is a lack of integrity, dangerously coupled with
an overabundance of gluttony.

4. We wrote this Manifesto with a view toward creating a cultural clearing for leader-
ship development in business, government, healthcare, education, science, the
arts, and other organizations and institutions. The early drafts of the Leadership
Manifesto on our website www.MasterfulCoaching.com created the opportunity
to engage leaders from different fields in a robust dialogue that raised a number
of pivotal questions: Why is leadership development so important today? How do
you transform ordinary people into extraordinary leaders? What is the best deliv-
ery mechanism for that transformational process?
The corporation has been our
laboratory for studying leadership,
but the lessons can be applied
We are interested in developing leaders in all domains: business, government,
healthcare, education, and other organizations. We want to see more able lead-
ers as presidents of countries, CEOs of corporations, directors of hospitals, chan-
cellors of universities, and so on. However, during the last decade or so we have
used corporations as a learning lab for discovering what it will take to develop
leaders in these other areas. We have seen firsthand the impact of the presence
or lack of leadership and clearly it is the difference between an inspired and a
resigned organization, between a successful strategy and a bankrupt one, be-
tween accomplishing what needs to be accomplished and watching the best
laid plans go astray.
Executive leadership development is not exclusive to the corporate boardroom.
Every organization with a hierarchical, fluid power structure—from corporations to
government agencies to charities—has key leadership positions that will require
effective leadership today and competent successors in the future. That means
that today’s leaders must focus on developing themselves as able leaders while
developing the next generation of leaders to take the helm. Thus, we assert that
today’s leaders should
put leadership devel-
Today’s leaders should put leadership development, opment—their own
and others’—at the
their own and others’, at the top of the agenda. top of the agenda.

5. Why leadership development
today is a "got to have" versus
a "nice to have"
We have directly witnessed, through our coaching work with corporate execu-
tives (this can be applied to any organization), that when a leader makes the
leap from "good" to "great," it can make a huge difference in the success of his
company. In some cases, paying attention to leadership development could be
Consider these facts:
a matter of survival. In 2003, Drake Bean Moran, an international Human Re-
sources consulting firm, reported the results of a research study that showed that
♦ The rate of CEO dismissals has
increased by 170% from 1995 to roughly 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs are replaced every year due to performance
2003 issues. We wonder if this would occur if CEOs paid more attention to leadership
development.
♦ 1/3 of all CEO turnovers in 2003
were involuntary
Secondly, a good reason for prioritizing leadership development concerns some
♦ 20% of current Fortune 700 CEOs
disturbing demographic trends. In the years ahead, there will be a declining lead-
have been in their current position
for one year or less ership pool to choose from. According to research by global HR outsourcing and
consulting firm, Hewitt Associates, as aging baby boomers move from the board-
♦ In 1980, more than half the CEOs
room to the golf course over the next decade, there will be a 15% decrease in
of Fortune 100 companies were in
their 60’s; today barely a quarter men and women of "key leader age." On top of that, many women are choosing
not to enter the job market, and more and more executives are choosing to
♦ The younger the CEO when hired,
downshift, as one might say, to "doing their own thing." If you are not actively de-
the higher the likelihood of being
fired veloping the next generation of leaders today, the chances are that the competi-
tion for leaders on the open market will be so stiff in the years ahead that your
organization may be priced out of the market.
The financial consequences of selecting and developing the
right people are huge; the difference between one person in a
role vs. another may be 100 to 150%.
Thirdly, which people are chosen for executive roles could equate to savings of at
least hundreds of thousands and upwards of millions of dollars. According to
Claude Pepper, CEO of Proctor & Gamble, "We give two of our market develop-
ment teams the same products, initiatives, and resources. The results of those
teams may vary as much as 50%. The distinguishing difference is who the leader of
the team is."

6. Finally, the challenge of managing organizations on a global basis in the midst of
demographic shifts, joint ventures, and disruptive technologies will increasingly
require extraordinary leaders who can develop a vision for the future, increase
creative collaboration, and mobilize people from top to bottom to bring about
change. Having effective leaders can directly translate to game-changing prod-
ucts or ideas, millions in profitable growth, and even billions of dollars in market
value.
How do you create a powerful
Leadership Pipeline that will
give your organization an edge
or advantage?
Today, almost every major enterprise has a strategic planning book that is over
one hundred pages long. In most cases, however, the number of organizations
that devote even one page to developing leaders is scarce. Research shows that
the vast majority of corporate executives spend less than 10% of their time on
leadership development. Our initial inquiries have shown that the figures for non-
corporate organizations, like government agencies or NGOs or universities, are
even lower.
There are notable exceptions, and they are to be found in the top performing
companies. CEO Jeff Immelt of General Electric, Larry Bossidy of Allied Signal,
Developing leaders is Claude Pepper of Procter & Gamble, and Roger Enrico of PepsiCo are noted for
more important than spending 25% to 50% of their time on leadership development. Why? These lead-
ers make the business strategy and people strategy link. Leadership development
developing a strategy.
gives them the organizational capability they need to reach their strategic goals,
- Jack Welch
mid-term milestones, and immediate financial objectives.
Leadership development may be a matter of
CEO survival.

7. Making the business strategy and leadership strategy link gives
you the organizational capability you need to succeed.
For example, Larry Bossidy personally interviews and conducts reference
checks of all his direct reports and their direct reports. Jeff Immelt spends
50% to 70% of his time in April and May alone on "Talent Reviews." Roger
Enrico conducts three to four weeklong "special classrooms" for high poten-
tial leaders every year that include an assessment of development needs,
as well as stretch assignments, breakthrough projects, and ongoing coach-
retention & ing and mentoring.
succession
Furthermore, research presented in the book Leading the Way, by authors
Robert Gandossy and Marc Effron, demonstrates that companies whose
CEOs are involved in leadership processes delivered a three-year total re-
turn to shareholders (TRS) of 22% rather than a TRS of negative 4% where
they were not involved.
Whether the CEO is a Secretary of State, agency head or chairman of a
development
non-profit , and whether the TRS takes the form of breakthroughs in problem
areas, greater initiatives that are acted on, or more money raised, the fact is
that leadership development is equally applicable and crucial to any
organization that needs to produce significant results.
The key to the leadership development efforts of these companies is that
they exceed such gestures as the royal appearance of a CEO at a leader-
maniacal focus on ship course, occasional 360°-feedback, or yearly performance reviews
selecting where "coaching points" are discussed. These top-performing companies
the best talent generally have institutionalized a leadership development process that has
been integrated with the development of their businesses. Larry Bossidy be-
lieves that there are three key processes in every organization: 1) the people
process; 2) the strategy process; and 3) the operations process. Of the
three, he believes the people process is the most important.
The 3 Keys of Leadership
Development Process
Getting the right leaders into the right jobs and developing them, Bossidy
According to Larry Bossidy,
believes, will almost automatically result in inventive and effective strategies,
make sure that these are
as well as superior execution. Thus, he makes selection, development, and
integrated, systematic and retention success the three keys in his leadership development processes
repeatable. and thereby ensuring they are integrated, systematic, and repeatable. In
most organizations, these processes are non-existent, broken, or piecemeal.

8. How do you take one person and
develop him or her as a leader?
Creating an effective leadership pipeline not only involves designing the
building blocks of a systematic people process, but also involves being
able to answer some fundamental questions with sufficient granularity.
For example: How do you take one person and develop him or her into
a leader? Most companies adhere to the Darwinian theory that leaders
are born, not made, and try to hire or buy leaders that fit the right profile,
paying scant attention to development.
Next, there is a small but growing number of CEOs who believe that
leadership is not just a matter of being a natural-born agent of change,
but of being cast into a situation that allows a person to discover and
express his or her leadership ability. This leads to "stretch assignments,"
where people are expected to learn by doing. Proctor & Gamble con-
sciously and intentionally hires the best and the brightest, then develops
leaders by giving them opportunities to lead early in their career, espe-
cially with new product development teams. People learn not in the
classroom, but in the process of doing.
Leaders develop by creating futures, not filling
gaps; through experiences, not abstract training
programs.
Finally, we have the prevailing paradigm of leadership development
that is based on the "characteristics and traits" school. It teaches that
leadership can be learned by studying great leaders, coming up with
lists of corporately sanctioned competencies, and identifying and filling
gaps. It usually involves marching hundreds of people off to an abstract
training program, having a talking head stand in front of the room and
provide descriptions and explanations about leadership, dragging out
Gates, Jobs, the list of the corporately sanctioned leadership characteristics and traits
Disney: filling a (competencies), assessing development needs with 360° tick sheets,
gap or creating devising a personal vision statement with respect to desires, goals, and
a future? change, and throwing in some classroom exercises to supposedly de-
velop new skills and attitudes.

9. The prevailing paradigm of
Leadership Development is
wrong-headed
We believe that, despite millions of dollars spent, despite thousands
re
tu
fu
n
of three-day training programs presented, despite hundreds of
sio
o ld
e
ch
th
vi
hours of preparation, and despite its almost universal acceptance
eb
oa
te
a
ea
e
by HR managers, there is almost not one shred of evidence that the
ac
B
at
Cr
ul
prevailing paradigm of leadership development works. The reason is
a te
t ic
Be
Ar
Execute
bor
that it is based on wrong-headed assumptions; if you get the as-
la
sumptions wrong, everything else will be wrong, too.
Col
How do we get these leadership
attributes into people?
The Prevailing Paradigm The New Paradigm
♦ Leadership development is the charge of HR or ♦ Leaders developing other leaders, starting
OD people with the top executive
♦ Leadership development is for the masses ♦ Leadership development starts with the
critical few
♦ Leaders develop in the process of identifying
♦ Leaders develop in the process of taking a
stand to make a difference and producing
and filling competency gaps
extraordinary results
♦ Leadership development happens in abstract ♦ Leadership development happens by
coaching people in specific situations in
training programs within limited time frames
real time (for 12 to 18 months)
( for 3 days)
♦ Leadership skills and attitudes are a matter of ♦ Leadership skills are a matter of having
tips and techniques something at stake, a sense of urgency,
practice and study

10. A new paradigm for leadership
development
We would like you to re-imagine a bold new paradigm of leadership
development that is based on a set of assumptions that are as different from
the prevailing ones as night and day! Let's build out the new paradigm of lead-
ership development that gets right to the heart of our Leadership Manifesto.
Companies where the CEO is heavily involved in leadership
development delivered a total return to shareholders of 22% over
three years, as opposed to minus 4% where they weren't.
New Paradigm # 1. The CEO and top executives are
rigorously involved.
The CEO is directly involved in leadership development in those companies that
produce a graduating class of CEOs for other firms, as well as leadership bench
strength. The most famous example is Jack Welch of General Electric who said
he spent 50 % of his time on leadership development. He developed his succes-
sor, Jeff Immelt, Larry Bossidy of Allied Signal, James McNerney of 3M, and
Robert Nardelli of Home Depot. CEOs need to "own," not automatically defer
leadership development to others. They must think of themselves as the top HR
person in the company. Coaches (both external and internal) need to build a
powerful relationship with the CEO aligning on achieving business goals, which
will automatically alter traditional leadership development efforts. Learning
must be totally integrated with performing, not a separate activity.

11. New Paradigm #2. Start with a critical few to spearhead a
breakthrough in leadership development.
At Masterful Coaching, we confess that a big part of the reason why we get great
results from our leadership coaching work is that we start with a critical few great
people who have the aspiration to be great leaders. For example, we received a
call from Joe Franklin, division vice president of a Fortune 500 corporation, who
had been given an executive assessment that showed his strengths and gaps.
Joe had a reputation as being a brilliant dealmaker and solid manager. I asked
Joe what he wanted to get out of the coaching. He said, "I want to make the shift
from a dealmaker to a leader and create a future that I can be proud of."
Coaching even one to two critical leaders to develop in this manner often be-
comes a spearhead for developing leaders at all levels. For instance, when peo-
ple start our executive coaching and take a stand for an extraordinary future for
themselves and their company, they then often decide to work with one of our
coaches and their leadership team in an Action Coaching program. Each individ-
ual in the group commits to a
significant business break-
Have you ever had a relationship with someone through in service of that ex-
traordinary future, as well as a
who took you beyond what you could see, and significant leadership break-
through. Participants of the
inspired you to achieve something beyond what Action Coaching are then
asked to coach two to three
you thought was possible? other people who report to
them, and a snowball effect
occurs.
New Paradigm #3. Extraordinary leaders develop in the
process of producing extraordinary results.
We are often asked by sincere, well-intended HR people to give our opinion
about their leadership development programs. These programs are usually based
on the prevailing paradigm of leadership development—studying characteristics
and traits, filling competency gaps, and classroom exercises. Our typical response
is, "A lot of the design elements of your leadership program are great. However,
when you are designing a leadership development program, the first question to
ask is what is the bow of the boat? Or what is the starting point that informs every-
thing else?" Our belief is that the bow of the boat in any leadership program is
achieving a business breakthrough. Rather than first asking, how do you need to
develop as a leader? ask, what is a significant business challenge you would like
to achieve? As people reach beyond themselves to achieve it, this then leads to
a corresponding leadership development breakthrough.

12. New Paradigm #4. High value-added coaching works
inexplicably better than training.
It takes more than you can get in a three day training program to gain mastery in
your field of endeavor. Think about Tiger Woods winning the Masters and then
working with coach Butch Harmon for an entire year, marching down every fair-
way in every tournament, talking about the right attitude that makes someone a
champion, as they practice driving and putting on a day-in, day-out basis. Now
imagine you or me, the average hacker, taking three sessions at the driving range
or a week at golf camp. This metaphor shows the difference between learning
new skills in a classroom and learning them in a real world performance situation,
between practicing and studying with a coach who gives you live feedback and
a packaged solution or ultimate answer, and between knowing "what" and know-
ing "how." In organizations, the kind of coaching we are talking about would show
up as helping people to define significant business and leadership breakthroughs,
then working with them shoulder to shoulder over the course of a year to achieve
them.
New Paradigm #5. People learn new skills when they are faced
with an immediate challenge and alternate
between practice and performance.
Change does not come easy and requires commitment, dedication, and time.
We have found that the best way to imbed new ways of being and new behav-
iors or skills is to alternate between practice and performance in the face of a
meaningful challenge. For example, one leader I coached, Greg, wanted to cre-
ate an inspired organization. He created a Source Document that contained his
vision and values. I then gave Greg some pointers on how to communicate his
Source Document in a way that people were inspired by it. The feedback Greg
received after a few town hall meetings showed that, while people liked Greg's
ideas, he showed up a bit cool and intense. I then coached Greg on calling him-
self forth as warm and engaging, and the feedback reflected he had made huge
progress. Again, this leadership transformation took place by intervening in the
situation over time.
The power of coaching is that it is focused on the individual’s
leadership and business breakthroughs; it is situation specific
and happens in real time.

13. What To Do With the Leadership
Manifesto: Better Leaders, Better World
The purpose of this Leadership Manifesto is to sound the tone for leadership devel-
opment and put it at the top of the agenda of every enterprise, public and pri-
vate. It is also about smashing the prevailing paradigm of leadership develop-
ment based on abstract training programs, and creating a powerful new para-
digm of leadership development based on the notion that extraordinary leaders
develop in the process of producing extraordinary results. The idea here is to gen-
erate a new conversation about leadership development that is based on the
premise that soft leadership skills produce hard results. If you find yourself aligned
with the ideas presented here and want to be part of the future of leadership in
the 2lst century, please consider the following ways of participating:
♦ Send us an e-mail with your views on the Leadership Manifesto—whether you
agree or disagree with it.
♦ Send the Leadership Manifesto to a leader whom you admire and
respect, requesting his or her written comment. We would like to attach the
written endorsement to the Manifesto itself.
♦ Generate a conversation by sending the Leadership Manifesto to everyone
on your e-mail distribution list and asking, "What do you think?" When you ask
people this question, they get involved.
♦ Invite people to a brown bag lunch meeting where you will discuss the Lead-
ership Manifesto. Ask people what they like about it, as well as if they have
any builds.
♦ Take a stand for leadership development in your organization. If you need
help in bringing a leadership development forward or in designing one,
please call us for a free consultation
Contact us for more information on how Masterful Coaching can help you im-
prove your leadership strategy and realize your business strategy.
Masterful Coaching
1732 Beacon Street
Brookline, MA 02445
01-617-739-3300
www.masterfulcoaching.com
info@masterfulcoaching.com